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Orwell Criticism G I L L I A N W O R K M A N
T N S P I T E of the existence of a number of comprehensive
critiques of Orwell, 1 it has seemed until recently that the most
con vincing and best organized critical material on Orwell was
in
fact to be found in early reviews of the individual books, written
by such authors as Julian Symons, Cyril Connolly, Henry Judd, M .
C. Hollis and Jerome Thale; or in introductory essays to individual
works, such as Richard Hoggart's and Stephen Spender's
introductions to the 1965 Heinemann editions of The Road to Wigan
Tier and 1984 respectively; in short articles like D . J . Dooley's
'The Limitations of George Orwell', Michael Fixler's 'George Orwell
and the Instrument of Language' and George Kateb's 'The Road to
1984'; or in the occasional section or chapter on Orwell found in
such books as John Wain's Essays on Literature and Ideas, Raymond
Williams's Culture and Society, Conor Cruise O'Brien's Writers and
Politics and L . J . Cohen's The Diversity of Meaning. And so
collections of critical opinion, such as are contained in the
tributory edition of World Review (June 1950) and Irving Howe's
Orwell's 1984: Text, Sources, Criticism (1963), are particularly
interesting.
1 T o m Hopkinson, George Orwell : London (British Council
Pamphlet), Longmans, Green & Co., first published 1953, new
edition 1962, pp. 36; John Atkins , George Orwell: London, John
Calder, 1954, pp. 348; Laurence Brander, George Orwell: London,
Longmans, 1956, pp. 212; Christopher Hol l i s , A Study of George
Orwell, the Man and his Works: London, Holl is and Carter, 1956,
pp. 212; Richard Rees, George Orwel l : Fugitive From the Camp of
Victory: London, Seeker and Warburg, 1961, pp. 160; Richard J .
Vorhees, The Paradox of George Orwell : Indiana, Purdue University
Press, 1961, pp. 127; S. J . Greenblatt, Three Modern Satirists,
Waugh, Orwell, and Huxley: New Haven and London, Yale University
Press, 1965, pp. x i + 125; Edward M . Thomas, Orwell: Edinburgh
and London, Oliver and Boyd, 1965, pp. X + 114; George Woodcock,
The Crystal Spirit, A Study of George Orwell : London, Cape, 1967,
pp. 287; B. T . Oxley, George Orwell : London, Evans Brothers L t d
. , 1967, pp. 144; Jenni Calder, Chronicles of Conscience: A Study
of George Orwell and Arthur Koestler: London, Seeker and Warburg,
1968, pp. 303 ; Ke i th Al ldr i t t , The Making of George Orwell:
An Essay in Literary History: London, Edward A r n o l d , 1969,
pp. X + 181.
O R W E L L C R I T I C I S M 63
Although the comprehensive critiques contain much useful material
and comment, they tend to lack the credibility and coherence of the
shorter essays; This is largely because the writers have considered
it necessary to write biographical criticism, thus burdening
themselves with the problems of Orwell's biography; while those who
discuss one work, or present a single argument, can ignore these
with impunity.
The first five comprehensive studies of Orwell were all written by
people who were friends or acquaintances of his : and it is in this
role, rather than in that of the literary critic, that they appear
in them. For although they clearly accept Orwell as a literary
figure, it is equally evident that they do so with important
reservations. On the one hand, they make comments like this:
One thing that marked Orwell out as a genuine writer and not as a
mere journalist was his intense interest in words . . . In later
life Orwell spent more care and hard thinking on the English
language and its possible developments than on any other single
subject.1
[His essay, 'The Prevention of Literature]' . . . should appear in
all future anthologies on the nature of literary art, along with
the earlier ones by Sidney and Shelley.2
But they also hold opinions like this: [Orwell] lived at a time
when any man with the character and gifts which might make him a
first-rate literary artist would be unlikely to devote his gifts
exclusively to writing . . . What he decided to write about was
politics, and from then on, although he was still certainly a
literary artist, it was more in the sense that one can apply the
term to Swift, for example, than to Turgenev . . . 3
I think his eminence is partly due to the fact that 'first he
wrought and afterwards he taught'. The reader knows that the man
who wrote the books lived and acted in a certain way and this
reacts upon his feelings about the books.4
It is indeed Orwell the man, rather than Orwell the writer, who is
at the centre of these studies.
The reason is not simply that Orwell's life 'proves' his works to
an unusual degree, but that those who knew him felt the need to
make an intellectual effort to come to terms with his
personality.
1 John Atkins, George Orwell, 1954, p. 308. 2 John Atkins, ibid, p.
148. 3 Sir Richard Rees, George Orwell: Fugitive From the Camp of
Victory, 1961, pp. 138-9. 4 Sir Richard Rees, ibid. , p. 138.
64 G I L L I A N W O R K M A N
Perhaps they are not themselves aware of their bias, but it appears
to the reader that these critics find their discussion of Orwell's
works important mainly because of the light that it may give them
in understanding the man they knew.
This is recognized by a later critic, George Woodcock, also a
friend of Orwell, who felt a similar compulsion to make the man
rather than the work central to his study. He thinks that the
premise on which such studies are based, that 'the man they knew as
George Orwell was more important as a personality than as a writer,
for what he was then for what he said' — is a fallacy, for 'how
else can the greatness of a writer better emerge than through his
writings ?' But this is, he argues, a fallacy which has been given
a large degree of emotional acceptance. Those who knew Orwell have
never been able to perform that act of faith demanded by so many
modern critics, to see the writings isolated from the man. Always
that gaunt, gentle, angry and endlessly con troversial image
intervenes . . . 1
And he adds that, in his own case : I had intended to write a
merely critical study of Orwell's books, but I found that until I
had — as it were — exorcized the memory of the man by committing my
recollections to paper, I could not approach his writings with any
degree of objectivity . . . Like these others I have written my
introductory section on Orwell as I knew him out of a sense of
inner necessity.2
Of the first five critics, Hollis seems to feel the need to justify
his use of the method of biographical criticism, and uses familiar
arguments to do so: We can assess more profitably even the writer
who traffics in the most objective of ideas if we know a little of
the background from which he came.3
And Rees becomes tortuous in a similar attempt: The book . . . is
intended as an introduction to Orwell. To the books rather than the
man, in so far as the two can be separated; but, as will appear
very clearly in these pages, a proper appreciation of the books
depends upon knowing something both about the man and about the
period in which he lived.4
1 George Woodcock, The Crystal Spirit, A Study of George Orwell,
1967, p. 7. 2 George Woodcock, ibid. , pp. 7-8. 3 Christopher Hol l
i s , A Study of George Orwell, the Man and his Works, 1956, p. v i
i . 4 Sir Richard Rees, ibid. , pp. 7-8.
O R W E L L C R I T I C I S M 65
The method itself however, needs little justification in this case,
because it is made more than usually suitable by the close
connection noted by his critics, wmich exists between Orwell's
actions and his writings : He also tried to work out his theories
in action and then to give his actions shape in literature. The
triad of thought, act and artifact runs through the whole of
Orwell's writing life; the pattern is not always so neatly arranged
as I may appear to be suggesting, but it is never entirely absent,
and one has difficulty in envisaging a future in which critics will
ever be able to think of Orwell's writings separately from his
life.1
Dr Johnson immediately comes to mind as being the same type of
force as Orwell, something which cannot be contained within the
limits of merely literary judgement. Indeed, it is interesting that
the adjective 'Orwellian' like 'Johnsonian,' should have passed
into the language with the same ambiguity of referring to qualities
both of the man and the work.2
One . . . keeps thinking of the man behind the writing, not the
craftsman; one has the experience that Pascal spoke of with such
pleasure, the experience of opening a book expecting to find an
author and finding a man.3
Although the method itself seems highly suitable, it is
questionable whether it is equally unexceptionable in practice, for
it seems that no one yet has been in a position to use it
adequately.
Though Messrs Hopkinson, Atkins, Brander, Hollis and Rees knew
Orwell, they were not adequately equipped for such studies of him.
They do not draw on any biographical material other than that which
was already available to the general public. As Vorhees has said of
them: Although these books have the advantage of first-hand
knowledge, this knowledge is limited by the respect of the authors
for Orwell's wish that there be no biography of him ; they have
included in their books only those facts that have been previously
recorded, some of them by Orwell's friends, but most of them by
Orwell himself, here and there in his published work.4
As a result, their studies have a close resemblance ; their method
of approach is similar, and the information each draws on is the
same.
1 George Woodcock, ib id . , p. 13. 2 Edward M . Thomas, Orwell,
1965, p. 1. 3 Richard J . Vorhees, The Paradox of George Orwell,
1961, p. 57. 4 Richard J . Vorhees, ib id . , p. 9.
5
66 G I L L I A N W O R K M A N
Some individualities of emphasis occur, as well as differences of
interpretation, but, none the less, these books are substantially
much the same, in the general picture they give of Orwell.
There are problems: to begin with, it is possible that what Orwell
says about himself in his works is not completely helpful. As
Woodcock says : The autobiographical form of his works can be
deceptive, if it is taken too literally, for Orwell rarely tells of
his own experience except to make a point illustrating some general
argument, usually of a political or social nature . . . Generally
he was highly selective in the auto biographical material he used
in his books or essays; there was rarely anything that could be
interpreted as a romantic uncovering of the depths of the self. . .
1
Like most writers of autobiography, Orwell tampered with facts in
the interests of artistic proportion and didactic emphasis. He
warns us of this in The Road to Wigan Vier when he remarks of Down
and Out in Paris and London that 'nearly all the incidents
described there actually happened, though they have been
rearranged'.2
The autobiographical passages may not, however, be simply
unhelpful, but they may be positively deceptive. For as a later
critic, Edward Thomas, argues, the Orwell the reader meets in his
works may be a consciously contrived literary persona: Evidence for
his life inside his own works abounds, but it is precisely here
that our difficulty arises. The figure we know as Orwell is almost
entirely the figure projected in his autobiographical books and
essays, which despite their easy colloquial manner, are far from
being spontaneous self-expression. All the books in which Orwell
speaks of himself have a serious social or political purpose, and
were often re-written several times with regard for the passionate
and convincing phrase; and it is therefore probable, perhaps
inevitable, that the character presented there as Orwell should be
a heightened version, a sharper definition, of the man his friends
remember as quieter, more tolerant, and with more sides to his
character. Like the stage character, who is not presented in every
detail, but only in so far as the details are relevant to the
dramatic purpose, so the character of Orwell is a series of
positions taken up in front of the problems with which he chose to
concern himself. Even the name Orwell was something deliberately
assumed : he chose it for himself when his literary character was
already comparatively well formed.3
1 George Woodcock, ibid. , p. 32. 2 George Woodcock, ibid. , pp.
64-5. 3 Edward M . Thomas, ibid. , pp. 1-2.
O R W E L L C R I T I C I S M 67
Woodcock takes this view even further, in his suggestion that the
image of Orwell derived by the reader from the oeuvre as a whole is
a result of Orwell's conscious engineering : Orwell . . . the
writer who built his major works around a single and enduring myth
appropriate to the twentieth-century world, of the man of
contradictory yet strangely consistent ideas, of the penetrating
critic who turned his examination upon himself as well as on others
and who in the process transformed himself by an almost conscious
act of the will into one of the purest and finest prose writers of
any English age.1
And Greenblatt similarly feels that: Orwell's claim that good prose
must be 'like a window pane' through which one sees clearly into
reality is simply a rhetorical device intended to induce the reader
into a state of easy credulity and the suspension of
disbelief.2
Woodcock, by speaking of 'the persona he revealed so guardedly to
his friends', goes so far as to suggest that Orwell sustained the
rhetorical projection of himself even outside his work; so that his
friends knew only as much of his personality as everyone could
know, from his works.
This is a view which cannot, however, be sustained; for these
writers do comment on discrepancies between the man they knew and
the man who emerges through the works : It is very easy to get a
false impression of Orwell from his books. His literary personality
often seemed to be divided from his daily- routine personality by a
wide gap. Reading his books it was easy to imagine a man riddled
with bitterness, one to whom the virtues of everyday life were
anathema. All those who knew him discovered that this was a
completely false picture. When he wrote he was possessed. As a
writer he seemed to be driven by forces which were normally
inhibited.3
. . . so deeply indeed was writing a part of Orwell's nature that
qualities are manifest in his work which do not reveal themselves
in his life.4
Below the surface it was conceivable that he might be 'awkward'.
Actually, below the surface he was extremely reserved and undemon
strative, exceptionally endowed with pudor.5
1 George Woodcock, ibid. , pp. 7-8. 2 S. J . Greenblatt, Three
Modern Satirists, Waugh, Orwell, and Huxley, 1965, p. 47. 3 John
Atkins, ibid. , p. 4. 4 T o m Hopkinson, George Orwell, 1962, p. 5.
5 Sir Richard Rees, ibid. , p. 93.
5*
68 G I L L I A N W O R K M A N
Where these earlier critics do differ from Woodcock, however, is in
their failure to suggest that the discrepancies that they see are
the result of Orwell's conscious rhetorical intentions. If we
assume, as do later critics increasingly that Orwell did have such
conscious intentions, we must conclude that their understanding of
him was, in some respects, inadequate. (Edward Thomas comments
that, 'None of those who have written about him give the impression
of having known him intimately'.)1 It is unlikely, however, that
they would dispute this view, for they themselves speak of Orwell's
reticence, his 'pudor', his 'almost fanatical reserve', inevitably
connecting these qualities with his request that no biography of
him should be written.
Even though three of the next four comprehensive studies — those by
Vorhees, Greenblatt, Thomas and Woodcock — contain comment on the
flaws in their predecessors' method, all four of their authors
still discuss Orwell the man in conjunction with his works. And,
since none of them — except Woodcock — shows evidence of access to
information not formerly used, the objections to the use of this
method (as opposed to its theoretical suitability) are
substantially the same. Vorhees alone of the three has the
consistency to modify the form in which this dual discussion is
presented; and, instead of following chronology, he pursues
'certain lines of paradox which run through Orwell's life and
writing'. 2
These studies do, however, contain the beginnings of new ways of
presenting material now well and truly familiar. In the larger part
of his book, Woodcock, like Vorhees in the whole of his, organizes
the material around various theses, rather than presenting it in
the strict chronological order that has been usual. Woodcock also
suggests that critics should apply procedures based on modern
psychology as a means of securing a greater understanding of the
man from his works : His published statements and the persona he
revealed so guardedly to his friends comprised all that he wished
to be known about himself. Yet, as we shall see later on examining
his books, that hidden self is rarely absent, and emerges most
strongly in the various forms of personal alienation which he
portrays and discusses.3
1 Edward M . Thomas, ibid. , p. 78. 2 Richard J . Vorhees, ibid. ,
p. 11. 3 George Woodcock, ibid. , p. 33.
O R W E L L C R I T I C I S M 69
To some extent, Woodcock uses this approach himself, which while it
makes his book refreshing reading, does not give a very different
picture of Orwell from that drawn by the other critics.
B. T. Oxley focuses on Orwell as a literary figure. His concern is
to establish Orwell's motives and aims as a writer, and the genres
to which his work as a whole, and the novels in particular, belong.
His conclusion — that Orwell's work as a whole is that of a
pamphleteer — may be a commonplace; his suggestion that the novels
belong to a genre that may be called 'concentration- camp
literature' may be unhelpful and rather bizarre, but his method is
lively. Furthermore, the essentials of his attitude are adopted by
the next two critics — Jenni Calder and Keith Alldritt — whose
books constitute a new departure in Orwell criticism.
Jenni Calder is less interested in working through all the
material, than in arguing two major points. She views Orwell's work
as that of a conscious propagandist and rhetorician. In her view,
Orwell 'geared his attempt to communicate to the public's refusal
to believe'.1 And she places Orwell against a much more
cosmopolitan and literary background than is usually drawn, thereby
considerably weakening the claustrophobia that was beginning to
oppress students of Orwell.
Whereas the tendency has been to consider Orwell's personality and
work in the light of his English schooling, of his experience both
as an administrator of the British Empire and as an expiator of
that experience; to consider him with reference to the English
class-structure, English politics and English intellectuals, she
refers his work to a literary and cultural context that is, at its
narrowest, European, and at times extends across the
Atlantic.
While the earlier critics, in spite of occasional notice of
Orwell's affinités with Zamiatin or Simone Weil, emphasized
Orwell's position as an isolated individual, Jenni Calder
establishes the fact that the autobiographical sections of Orwell's
work combined, as they usually are, with documentary reportage, are
part of a widespread literary movement. She connects Orwell not
only with Koestler, but with writers such as John Dos Passos,
Rex
1 Jenni Calder, Chronicles of Conscience: A Study of George Orwell
and Arthur Koestler, 1968, p. 50.
7 ° G I L L I A N W O R K M A N
Warner, Steinbeck, Malraux and Silone, J . B. Pick, B. L . Coombes,
and Mark Benney.
She considers that this movement began about ten years after the
end of the First World War, when accounts of war experiences began
to appear: In these accounts the rendering of personal experience
inevitably becomes a chronicle of events, and documentary reports
become centred on personal experience . . . never before had
autobiographical documentary become so legitimate and common a
means of reflecting the stresses of the times.1
The genre was adopted by the socialist movement. In many of the
Left Book Club publications (of which Orwell's The Road to Wigan
Tier was one) the writer was 'often the hero of his own
documentary'.2 Then, with the outbreak of the second World War, the
genre was further modified, with the loss of its propagan dizing
impluse. It 'became part of an effort to make sense of the War not
in terms of political creed but of the individual's
identity'.3
Jenni Calder forces the reader to view the autobiographical part of
Orwell's oeuvre in a new perspective. She also presents us with a
more complete and coherent view, of the standards by which Orwell's
work should be judged, arguing for its simultaneous assessment in
terms of its success both as propaganda and as literature: If the
propaganda methods used by . . . Orwell are morally acceptable . .
. their ultimate defence rests on whether they were compatible with
the literary forms in which they were used, and on whether they in
fact produced results.4
Altogether, she has made considerable departures from the premises
that her predecessors used in assessing Orwell's work.
Keith Alldritt's book resembles Jenni Calder's in that it also
refers Orwell's work to an appropriate literary context. The frame
of reference is not, however, the same. While he bases his study
mainly on the autobiographical part of Orwell's oeuvre, he
acknowledges only briefly its affinity with 'reportage of the
kind
1 Jenni Calder, ibid. , pp. 12-13. 2 Jenni Calder, ib id . , p. 19.
3 Jenni Calder, ib id . , p. 28. 4 Jenni Calder, ibid. , pp.
276-7.
O R W E L L C R I T I C I S M 71
that was so much in vogue during the thirties'.1 He places Orwell
in the context of such writers as Auden, Spender, Isherwood and
MacNeice, W. B. Yeats, T . S. Eliot, James Joyce and D . H .
Lawrence ; Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé and Proust.
He is interested in the 'autobiography' largely because he is
interested in Orwell as an individual. He is, however, unlike the
earlier critics, in that he has been more successful in fusing a
study of the man with a study of his works. And he has achieved
this precisely by his constant reference to Orwell's position
vis-a-vis the symbolist movement and its pervasive influence on
contem porary attitudes.
He maintains that Orwell's problems, both as an individual and a
writer, arose from the fact that he had an antipathy for the
prevailing literary orthodoxy, which was symbolism. Orwell's true
(and very traditional) purpose as a novelist. . . was to describe
social life and to identify the valuable in social terms. The
symbolist aesthetic is, of course, totally irreconcilable with such
intentions.2
He sees Orwell, uneasily influenced by the symbolists early in his
career, later escaping into modes of expression more suited to his
own predispositions, and ultimately reabsorbed into orthodox ways
of thought. Indeed, he finds that Orwell's autobiography and his
fiction are interesting chiefly as a continuing attempt to find a
viable alternative to the symbolist assumptions that dominated the
literary life of his time.3
He feels that Orwell the man was ultimately trying to 'make a
personality, a selfhood, which will allow of relationships that are
morally and emotionally satisfactory'.4 This was the reason for his
socialism. For him, it was 'not so much a political system as the
prospect of a unity of being in society that will promote a similar
unity within the self'.5 Flis faith in the possible realization of
this vision which enabled him to break away from the orthodoxy of
symbolism, with its insistence on the supreme importance of
the
1 Ke i th Al ldr i t t , The Making of George Orwell: An Essay in
Literary History, 1969, p. 43.
2 Ke i th Al ldr i t t , ibid. , p. 177. 3 Ke i th Al ldr i t t ,
ibid. , p. 17. 4 Ke i th Al ldr i t t , ibid. , p. 5. 5 Ke i th Al
ldr i t t , ibid. , p. 84.
72 G I L L I A N W O R K M A N
inner world of the individual. But as soon as Orwell doubted his
earlier, hard-won, conviction, he became 'fully susceptible to the
standard modern forms'.1
Even on those few occasions when his excursions in quest of
valuable social experience were rewarded, he was always . . .
tormented by doubts about his ability as a writer to do justice to
the occasion. These difficulties must in great part be attributed
to the fact that his endeavour could find no support from the
literary methods of the age. Orwell's quest for new experience
entailed a further problem of new forms. On the other hand, in his
moment of doubt the age was with him; the forms were there, as they
always had been, to recommend themselves . . . His most creative
and original vision struggled awkwardly for expression; his moment
of doubt was confirmed and specified by the pervasive categories of
the time.2
Alldritt's basic premise has led to some interesting readings of
Orwell's works: his view of Animal Farm, in particular, is unusual,
for he sees it as 'a piece of literary self-indulgence'3 in that
the form used 'allows only of simple ideas, easy responses and
obvious conclusions'.4 The importance of his study, nevertheless,
lies above all in the success and coherence of its approach. Not
only does he set Orwell's work in its literary context, but he
justifies the critical feeling that Orwell's life and work must be
discussed together to an extent that none of the other critics have
done.
The form of the last three, and particularly of the last two,
critiques of Orwell suggests that critics no longer feel it
adequate to adjust their focus to view Orwell's life alone, as a
means of answering the questions which any reading of Orwell's work
seems to suggest. Perhaps the would-be biographical critic is
waiting for the appearance of new material, which will better
enable him to grapple with the inward consciousness of a man whose
public mask seems to make his personality so elusive.
If so, his frustration is likely to be of long duration. For the
only new material to appear recently (in The Collected Essays,
Journalism and Fetters of George Orwell),5 contains nothing
to
1 Ke i th Al ldr i t t , ib id . , p. 177. 2 Ke i th Al ldr i t t ,
ibid. , p. 178. 3 Keith Al ldr i t t , ibid. , p. 150. 4 Keith Al
ldr i t t , ibid. , p. 149. 6 Collected Essays, Journalism and
Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwel l and Ian
Angus, Seeker and Warburg, 1968.
O R W E L L C R I T I C I S M 73
satisfy such a critic. Mary McCarthy, for instance, laments that
the Collection is, 'very sparse in letters', which 'gives a bleak
impression of a life'.1 And Mrs Orwell has confirmed that this
Collection does contain all the surviving material that is not
repetitious or ephemeral, apart from two letters that might upset
people still living. 'There are no dark secrets lurking in the
Orwell Archive . . . ' . 2 And, as Mrs Orwell also says, 'on the
evidence of Orwell's letters that have survived it is doubtful that
the missing ones contain many revelations'.3
It seems likely, however, that the biographical critic will not
accept his disappointment easily. There was definitely a myth among
Orwell students, about 'the letters that Mrs Orwell will not allow
to be seen', before the publication of the Collection. So it is
quite likely that Mrs Orwell's feeling about Mary McCarthy applies
to many critics : But even if every single word Orwell wrote that
has been preserved had been published in these volumes, Miss
McCarthy would still want the non-existent letters. It is as if she
feels obscurely the victim of a plot, that something has been
withheld from her that, to quote her again, the editors had been
trying to 'protect' Orwell in some way and of course she is not
going to be hoodwinked like that ! 4
On the whole, it seems likely that critics may find it more
valuable to abandon the biographical approach; and to follow the
lead given by Jenni Calder and Keith Alldritt in establishing
Orwell's literary affinités and his relationship to the various
movements and coteries which formed the cultural situation of his
day.
1 Mary McCarthy, 'The Wri t ing on the W a l l ' , New York Review
of Books, V o l . x u , N o . 2, Jan. 30, 1969, pp. 3-6, p.
3.